Expert Witness : World News

FEE would support proportionate regulation aimed at enhancing audit quality and audit services supply but warns against overregulation and unintended consequences

Brussels, 29 September 2011 – FEE (Fédération des Experts-comptables Européens – Federation of European Accountants) has noted media reports on possible European Commission proposals on audit policy. The proposals are understood to be complex and contain a detailed set of provisions that may impact widely on Public Interest Entities (PIEs) and Small and Medium-sized Entities (SMEs), stock markets, audit firms, different segments of the audit market, accountancy bodies and the whole future shape of the accountancy profession. Consequently, looking forward, we can only make detailed comments on such proposals once a thorough analysis has been undertaken in order to understand all the legal implications and long-term practical consequences, however, there are important matters which we consider must be addressed at this early stage.

Study of 10 million web application attacks shows automated attacks can peak at 25,000 an hour

Redwood Shores, Calif. – Imperva, the data security leader, released today the results of the Imperva 2011 Web Application Attack Report (WAAR), which revealed that web applications, on average, experience twenty seven attacks per hour, or roughly one attack every two minutes. The WAAR, created as a part of Imperva’s ongoing Hacker Intelligence Initiative, offers insight into actual malicious web application attack traffic over a period of six months, December 2010 through May 2011.

At the end of March two protagonists in a bitter court battle that had gone on for two years agreed a truce in the American courts. The case concerned the staging and conduct of the 2010 America’s Cup yacht race and involved two of the world’s richest men representing two high-profile yacht clubs in the USA and Switzerland.

The America’s Cup is the most prestigious yacht race in the world, yet this round in the on-going competition was seen by most as a side show to the series of high-level court cases involving just about every aspect of the race: who could take part, what the boats could be made of and where the material should come from.

A court in America has ruled that expert witness fees are not recoverable by parents who win actions under the country’s Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

In a judgement that would seem perverse to British experts, the US Supreme Court held that: “the term ‘costs’, as it appears in the statute, is a ‘term of art’ that did not include expert expenses.”

The judgement came in the case of Arlington Central School District Board of Education vs Murphy.

The applicable provision of the IDEA [20 USC 1415(i)(3)(B)] states that “[i]n an action or proceeding brought under this section, the court, in its discretion, may award reasonable attorneys’ fees as part of the costs to the parents of a child with a disability who is the prevailing party.”